{"id":6095,"date":"2010-10-28T13:26:51","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T17:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6095"},"modified":"2022-03-30T13:39:43","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T17:39:43","slug":"its-like-asking-an-alcoholic-to-run-a-distillery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/28\/its-like-asking-an-alcoholic-to-run-a-distillery\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s “like asking an alcoholic to run a distillery”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dissent on the announced purchase of F-35 fighter jets<\/a> continues to gain traction:<\/p>\n

\n

In an interview on CBC\u2019s Power and Politics<\/em> last night, Industry Minister Tony Clement admitted we are buying the F-35s because the military wants them. \u201cIt is the best plane on the market. I will say on your program, I\u2019m not the expert. The military are the experts. Why don\u2019t the Liberals take the word of the Canadian military on that?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Let me count the ways. A brief read of the A-G\u2019s report on the purchase of military helicopters suggests a host of reasons why allowing the Department of National Defence to dictate procurement is like asking an alcoholic to run a distillery.<\/p>\n

Sheila Fraser\u2019s report concluded that National Defence knew, but did not tell the politicians, that the helicopter it wanted was not an \u201coff-the-shelf \u201c model, with a relatively low risk of cost and time overruns.<\/p>\n

In the event, the total cost for the 15 Chinook heavy lift helicopters more than doubled to $4.9-billion from the $2-billion price tag when the project was presented to the Conservative government and approved. Helicopters that were initially scheduled to be delivered last July, now won\u2019t be ready until June 2013 — a state of affairs Ms. Fraser decried as \u201ctotally inappropriate\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m not convinced that the F-35 is the aircraft Canada actually needs<\/em>, and the DND’s track record on equipment purchases combined with the ultra-spendy pricetag on the F-35 make me concerned that they’re going to put themselves in the same state as the British armed forces by over-committing to kit that they (that is, we) can’t afford.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dissent on the announced purchase of F-35 fighter jets continues to gain traction: In an interview on CBC\u2019s Power and Politics last night, Industry Minister Tony Clement admitted we are buying the F-35s because the military wants them. \u201cIt is the best plane on the market. I will say on your program, I\u2019m not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25,5,53],"tags":[145,559,565,1463],"class_list":["post-6095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-economics","category-military","category-politics","tag-airforce","tag-f-35","tag-helicopters","tag-militaryprocurement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Aj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6095"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72717,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6095\/revisions\/72717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}